This Week in History

February 21, 1971: The United States joins with other countries in signing the international Convention on Psychotropic Substances, in Vienna, Austria.

February 16, 1982: During a speech in Miami, Florida, George H. W. Bush promises to use sophisticated military aircraft to track the airplanes used by drug smugglers. By June, airborne surveillance time is running a mere 40 hours per month, not the 360 hours promised by Bush, prompting Rep. Glenn English to call hearings on the topic. By October, the General Accounting Office issues an opinion in which it finds "it is doubtful whether the [South Florida] task force can have any substantial long-term impact on drug availability."

February 17, 1997: Legislation to repeal an 18 year-old state law permitting physicians to prescribe marijuana for patients suffering from cancer or glaucoma is voted down by a Virginia Senate committee in a 9-6 vote.

February 20, 1997: CNN reports that a prestigious panel of experts convened by the National Institutes of Health said there is promising evidence that smoking marijuana may ease the suffering of some seriously ill patients.

February 18, 1999: Dr. Frank Fisher, a pain doctor from Northern California, is arrested and charged with five counts of murder. After about six years of legal wrangling and having more charges levied against him, he is determined to be completely innocent.

February 18, 2000: President Clinton signs the "Hillary J. Farias and Samantha Reid Date-Rape Drug Prohibition Act of 2000," categorizing GHB as a Schedule I drug.

February 22, 2000: Due to drug-related violence, the US State Department issues a traveler's advisory warning for Tijuana, Mexico City, and Ciudad Juárez, which are labeled as "dangerous." Juárez Mayor Gustavo Elizondo protests to US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

February 21, 2001: The New York Times reports that a recent study released at a World Health Organization meeting found that American teens are more likely to smoke marijuana and use other illicit drugs than their European counterparts. While they are more likely to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol, only 17 percent of European 10th graders reported marijuana use, compared to 41 percent of American 10th graders. The study is interesting considering the US implements a zero-tolerance approach while many European countries tend to employ harm-reduction strategies and are generally more tolerant.

February 19, 2004: Veterans and medical marijuana activists in San Francisco hold a protest/rally in front of San Francisco's Veterans Administration Outpatient Clinic and ask doctors working for the Veteran's Administration to help provide better access to medical marijuana.

Hemp legalization can ride on the back of medical marijuana. This direct action project aims to convey that hemp is beneficial, is not a drug, and the government has no business preventing hemp farming.

Civil disobedience: a group of medical marijuana cardholders collectively purchase a small amount of land somewhere in California. Instead of growing marijuana, we grow hemp (absolutely, positively no THC hemp). The number of plants is hopefully enough to trigger DEA interest if the plants were marijuana.

At a time when the plants are mature, we call the DEA and alert them to our hemp plants, inform them that we reject their regulation of our crop of hemp, and that we stand together willing to go to jail.

Imagine the beauty of 60 or 100 or more landowning people imprisoned for growing hemp. And the beauty of it is, that each of them is a medical marijuana card holder. They are allowed by their doctors and the state of California to grow and smoke marijuana, but the DEA comes in and rips the place up for...soybeans, carrots, and hemp.

They might well be caught in a public relations trap of their own absurdity. They will be busting us for as close to nothing as can be imagined. The American public already believes the war on drugs is lost.

Hey, we might be caught in a trap of steel bars, but we'll be the one's laughing and rejoicing. Warning: the feds bust people for selling unpasteurized milk. There is every reason to believe they will gladly arrest and imprison 100 people for something as dangerous as a marijuana look-alike plant.

Anyway, I expect that filming the entire carefully controlled process, the mass arrests, and hopefully watching the judge throw the case out will give us a public relations edge. This is a PR project to clearly show the total absurdity of hemp prohibition. I expect that our small victory will leap-frog ahead the entire legalization movement.

When it's all said and done, we sell the land and get our money back, provided that the land wasn't seized in civil-asset forfeiture.

Comment back if you like this idea. (I'm in San Diego). Lot's of details to work out.